Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Washington, DC - This morning the Pentagon announced the formation of a new, 500-man elite fighting unit termed the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF).

These forces will be air-dropped into Afghanistan having received only the following briefing on the terrorists:

1. The season opened today. 2. There is no limit. 3. They taste just like chicken. 4. They don't like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.5. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon anticipates operations in Afghanistan to be complete by Wednesday.

Repeat a lie often enough, through enough different propagandists, and a substantial percentage of the populace will begin to believe it.

The tactic is called "The Big Lie" and it was exploited to great effect during the thirties by none other than Adolf Hitler's chief propagandist, Julius Streicher, to demonize Jews, Catholics, gypsies, homosexuals, the handicapped and other "undesirables".

And this tactic is being used -- plainly and obviously -- against the Tea Party.

REP. ANDRE CARSON, (D), INDIANA: Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens. (audience members reply, "Yes!") Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party would love to see you and me- I'm sorry, Tamron- hanging on a tree. (audience members reply, "Yes!") Some of them right now in Congress are comfortable with where we were 50 and 60 years ago.

This theme was, in all likelihood, orchestrated by none other than David Axelrod. His purpose, like Alinsky, is to freeze the Tea Party, to personalize it and to polarize it.

Axelrod's obvious and outrageous "Big Lie"? That a disconnected, decentralized group of millions of law-abiding citizens -- people of every race, religion, creed and color... people who believe in Constitutional, limited, financially responsible government... people who gather peacefully in cities and towns across the United States! -- are violent racists bent on re-instituting Jim Crow?

No, the party of Lincoln and the party of Martin Luther King, Jr. is the Republican Party, you Marxist crackpot!

The Democrat CBC racists must ignore the fact that a growing cadre of strong black conservatives, led by Herman Cain, Rep. Allen West and Rep. Tim Scott, are among the most popular of all Tea Partiers. After all, facts, logic and reason were never the radical left's strong suits.

I believe it is incumbent on you to both condemn these types of hate-filled comments, and to disassociate the Congressional Black Caucus from these types of remarks. Otherwise, I will have to seriously reconsider my membership within the organization.

Congressman Carson’s desire to generally criticize a large grassroots group as racist is baseless and desperate. When individuals believe they are defeated in a political disagreement, they normally resort to race-baiting, which in my opinion is in itself racist.

I think what you see is a desire to not recognize some of the serious problems in the black community. To try to have a scapegoat that is the Tea Party … that’s just a distraction. The Tea Party stands for some basic, constitutional principles.

The tactics of Alinsky and Hitler and Farrakhan and Axelrod must be exposed for what they are.

Carson's rhetoric isn't simply hateful: it's dangerous. It sets the stage for violence and unrest. Even if only one person takes Carson's lies seriously, a terrible set of consequences can result. His lies are beyond the pale; they are unacceptable behavior for a member of Congress.

The House of Representatives must not let him get away with this behavior.

Call Speaker John Boehner at (202) 225-6205 and tell him that the Anti-Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Rep. Andre Carson -- must be censured by the House.

Solyndra, a San Francisco based solar panel company that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government has declared bankruptcy. Last year President Obama touted the company as “leading the way” in the green jobs future he envisions.

Just a few months ago, ABC News revealed that one of the major financial backers for Solyndra is also a major donor to the Obama campaign... The donor, Steve Westley, has subsequently been named to the President’s Energy Advisory Board. Solyndra was supposed to have produced 4,000 jobs with the loan guarantee. Now all of the company’s employees have been laid-off. Mr. Westley is still on the advisory board.

Congressman Cliff Stearns, Chair of House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight Subcomittee, released the following statement this afternoon: "In an apparent rush to push stimulus dollars out the door, the Obama Administration wasted $535 million in taxpayer funds in guaranteeing a loan to a firm that has proven to be unviable in the global market... For months, we have been investigating how and why nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money was committed to this financially troubled company."

When the final history of this administration is written, I predict that we will have seen the most wanton waste, fraud and abuse of the taxpayer in history; in fact, it will have been of a scale so epic and so unbelievably criminal in nature that Richard Nixon will look like George Washington in comparison.

According to ComScore, 70 percent of handset owners sent out an SMS during the three-month period. Using a browser and downloading applications came in second and third with 41.1 percent and 40.6 percent of Americans engaging in those activities, respectively...

...ComScore's study is just the latest research to conclude that Android is easily dominating all other competitors in the mobile space. Earlier this month, another research firm, NPD, said that during the second quarter, Android was running on 52 percent of all smartphones sold in the U.S., besting iOS, which secured 29 percent market share. NPD concluded that BlackBerry OS had 11 percent share... Android's success is helping the U.S. smartphone market explode. During the three-month period ended July, 82.2 million people in the U.S. owned a smartphone, ComScore found. That figure was up 10 percent from the prior three-month period...

According to ComScore, Samsung's handsets proved to be most popular during the last three-month period, earning 25.5 percent market share. LG's devices had 20.9 percent share. Motorola, Apple, and RIM rounded out the top five with 14.1 percent, 9.5 percent, and 7.6 percent share, respectively.

I was speaking with an iPhone user today who said that five years from now, almost every single person in America would have a smartphone. That may be a conservative estimate.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, [energy prices] would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was... [t]hey will pass that money on to consumers." --Barack Obama, 1 November 2008

Mission accomplished.

This graph depicts gas prices since the election of President Subprime McDowngrade.

I wouldn't worry. Perhaps the Chinese will sell us gas from our own continent.

The federal government has sued a major trucking company for its firing of driver with an admitted alcohol abuse problem.

Alcoholism is classified as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the suit maintains, and therefore employees cannot be prohibited even from driving 18 wheelers due to their histories of abuse.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed the suit against the Old Dominion Freight Line trucking company on August 16, noted that while “an employer’s concern regarding safety on our highways is a legitimate issue, an employer can both ensure safety and comply with the ADA.”

The way I figure it, the federal government wants to combine swarms of drunk truck drivers on the same roads that are teeming with 54 MPG micro-cars. Now that would minimize Obamacare spending!

This afternoon, the Blogger service decided it had enough with this august journal and pulled the plug. All three of my regular readers emailed me, complaining that the site was missing. Here's the graph of today's traffic:

Fortunately, my bloggers-in-arms came to the rescue upon hearing of it getting, eh, downgraded.

QOTD: "Politicians and the beneficiaries of their fiscal illusions for the past 80 years abused the Keynesian philosophy, relentlessly and dangerously pursuing the use of debt for self-aggrandizement. Today, the citizens of indebted nations bear a heavy burden and must begin repaying the debts. It is a herculean task, because the debts are mountainous. Yet, there is no choice, because investors have become intolerant of fiscal follies. They are saying no to Keynes, in other words." --Tony Crescenzi, PIMO

A new poll by CNN and ORC International finds that 27 percent of Democrats would like to see their party nominate a candidate other than Barack Obama for president in 2012.

In response to the question, "Do you think the Democratic party should renominate Barack Obama as the party's candidate for president in 2012, or do you think the Democratic party should nominate a different candidate for president in 2012?" -- 72 percent said they wanted to see Obama renominated. But 27 percent, slightly more than one in every four, said they wanted to see Democrats nominate a different candidate.

I, for one, think the far left should nominate a third party candidate. Someone reliably progressive, like Bernie Sanders or Cynthia McKinney.

QOTD: "Since 2003, Texas has become a model for national tort reform. That year, the state enacted a $250,000 cap on medical liability for non-economic damages... That reform in particular helped free Texas from excessive medical-malpractice insurance premiums that had driven many physicians out of state...

And he continues to push a loser-pays system to discourage frivolous lawsuits, barring judges from finding new causes of action from the bench and expediting trials for litigants with legitimate claims.

As you probably know, food stamps and other wealth redistribution schemes have exploded to historic highs under the direction of the Obama administration.

What you may not know is that even the USDA has no clue what kinds of foods are "legitimately" purchased with EBTs: for example, junk food, candy, and other foodstuffs that increase obesity and diabetes. Why should we care? Because not only are taxpayers funding unhealthy eating -- they are then footing the bill for any resulting medical bills under programs like Medicaid and SCHIP.

People who qualify for food stamps - known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP - have a growing variety of places where they can use their electronic benefit (EBT) cards, including supermarkets, gas stations, Papa Murphy pizza shops and even dollar-discount stores - essentially, any business that can install coolers to stock specific kinds of food and meet minimum federal requirements...

...Nationally, about 210,000 food stamp vendors split the $64.7 billion that SNAP participants spent last year... While the cost of SNAP and the number of people it serves aren't in doubt, other information about the government program is more difficult to get...

...the [USDA] does not track what types of foods participants buy with food stamps. Almost all foods, including pop and energy drinks, can be bought with food stamps...

...The high number of convenience stores in SNAP alarms public health advocates... In an era of rising obesity rates, some argue that restrictions should be placed on what people can buy with their EBT cards. Without restrictions, participants often eat foods that lead to health problems, which then lead to higher costs in government-run health care plans... "It doesn't seem to me that government should buy things that make people sick and then clean up the mess later," said Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity...

...One thing is certain: Not even the USDA knows what people are buying with food stamps. Earlier this year, the department sent a request to companies seeking help in compiling hard data...

Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart? On average, each taxpaying household in America sends about $1,000 a year to the USDA to provide food stamps to the "needy". And the USDA has no idea what kinds of foods are actually being purchased with your money.

Last month, KING 5 recorded illegal transactions outside a Seattle supermarket. People were handing cards over to one of several people working outside the store. They are part of a ring that pays 50 cents on the dollar for food stamps, which are distributed monthly on debit cards.

KING 5 recorded the video with help from a man we'll call Peter. He’s a food stamp recipient who says addicts especially are eager to trade food-only benefits for half their value in cash.

“(They are) buying crack, booze, prostitutes,” says Peter... We wanted to ask the USDA how it can manage a bigger program with fewer investigations, but the department refused multiple requests for an on-camera interview during our visit to Washington D.C. last month... The USDA division that administers food stamps, the Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), was particularly tight-lipped. FNS spokesman Jack Currie refused to return phone calls from the KING 5 Investigators.

The Columbus gun smuggling case might be linked to a national case... The mayor, police chief and a trustee have all pled guilty to running guns to the Juarez drug cartel "La Linea".

At a hearing for police Chief Angelo Vega on Thursday, it was revealed that six of those weapons may be connected to "Operation Fast and Furious"[, ...] an ATF program that allowed thousands of guns to cross into Mexico so that federal agents could track them.

Now "Fast and Furious" is under investigation, because officials lost track of more than a third of the guns, many of which were linked to shootings.

The former mayor of a New Mexico border town pleaded guilty to gun smuggling charges four months after he was arrested in a federal sting.

On Tuesday, Eddie Espinoza, 51, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, three counts of making false statements, and three counts of smuggling firearms from the United States.

The guilty plea means the former mayor of the village of Columbus could face up to 50 years in a federal prison.

In March, federal agents arrested Espinoza and several others, including Columbus Chief of Police Angelo Vega and village Trustee Blas Gutierrez.

Federal documents state the group smuggled more than 200 guns from New Mexico to the streets of Cíudad Juárez and Palomas, Chihuahua. The documents further state that at times the group used unmarked police cars registered to Columbus to smuggle the guns across the border... the guns [were connected] to at least eight murders in those cities.

If we had a real media in this country, a firestorm of outrage would have already been ignited among the electorate. And the most partisan Attorney General in American history -- Eric Holder -- would be testifying every day in front of Congress.

QOTD: "Judicial Watch is investigating the extent to which the Obama DOJ and Project Vote are partnering in a national campaign to use the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) to register more individuals on public assistance, widely considered a key voting block for the Obama 2012 campaign...

...we already know that Project Vote is corrupt. We also know that the organization is putting a full-court press on key swing states to manipulate voter registration laws in order to 'get out the vote' for Obama and the Democrats in 2012. And leading that charge is Estelle Rogers... [who is] a former attorney for ACORN." --Tom Fitton, Obama’s War on Transparency

Saturday, August 27, 2011

"Mrs. Sanders, this is Doctor Jones at Saint Agnes Laboratory. When your husband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from another Mr. Sanders arrived as well; we are now uncertain which one belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Sanders asks nervously.

"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other one tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which."

"That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?" questioned Mrs.Sanders.

"Normally we can, but Obamacare will only pay for these expensive tests once."

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"

"The Obamacare Helpdesk recommends that you drop your husband off somewhere in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him.

"...it wasn't until I stepped away from the corporate track and worked in city government and eventually helped to found the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program, a national service program, that I realized how important public service and community service was to my own development... And now that the two of us have moved to Washington, our new home -- (applause) -- we both have continued to stress the value of national and community service..." --Michelle Obama, 17 March 2009

The phrase "public service" must mean different things to different people.

...Bachmann had harsh words for the EPA, which she called the “job-killing agency of America.”

“I intend to bring back true change, true hope, by repealing the tax code and dramatically cutting spending and I’m going to start with the Environmental Protection Agency,” she said, eliciting cheers from her tea party audience. “I am so happy you agree, because I intend to turn out the lights and lock the doors.”

She spoke similarly of the Department of Education, which she said then-President Jimmy Carter created as a “payoff to a union”:

So this is what I would do. I would pass a mother of all repeal bills for education, get rid of all of the unfunded mandates that the federal government puts on our local schools — making it very difficult for schools to be effective. … I would have a very busy day, a very busy day. ‘Cause I first have to make a trip to the EPA and after that, I have to go to the Department of Education because I also have to shut the lights off and lock the doors over there, as well.

Bachmann, who criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the recovery from the Great Recession and vowed to shrink the size of the federal government, said just electing another Republican won't help - she's the Republican who will make the difference... "You can put a Republican in there to manage big government, but you're not going to have America as the prosperous big dog in the world again if you do that."

She vowed to go to Washington to cut federal spending and get the nation's economic house in order... "We're going to be turning a lot of lights off and locking a lot of doors in Washington, D.C.," the Minnesota Republican said.

..."The president has failed on unemployment," Bachmann said. "After the president passed the stimulus we saw millions of jobs in the private sector go away."

At the same time, she said, "hundreds of thousands" of government jobs were added. Those federal jobs, she said, have average wages and benefits of $123,000 while the average for private sector jobs is $61,000.

Halfway through the meeting, Gov. Nikki Haley made an unexpected appearance and asked Bachmann about the National Labor Relations Board, which has filed a complaint against Boeing...

...The aircraft maker recently opened a $750 million plant in North Charleston, South Carolina's largest industrial investment.

The NLRB alleges the plant was built in South Carolina, a right to work state, to avoid unionized labor in Washington state...

...Bachmann also said she would only appoint pro-growth members to the NLRB.

Asked about immigration, Bachmann said the nation needs to secure the nation's southern border... "I would build the barrier or fence. Every mile, every yard, every inch of that southern border needs to be covered," she said.

Everything Michele Bachmann says makes sense.

We need a true conservative in office if we are to begin unwinding the catastrophic damage to the Constitution that the last 80 years of Democrat-Statist policies have wrought.

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.

The fact that the government would issue warrants based on their interpretation of another country’s laws is laughable–and scary–in and of itself, but that they would demonize an American, non-unionized (coincidentally, I’m sure) company for something that isn’t even a crime (especially not in the American lawbooks) is a gross misjustice. Keep in mind that the Indian government itself wasn’t involved in the Gibson warrants and raid.

When warrants as ridiculous such as these are issued and executed, there appears no other reason than because the company or individual at hand is being targeted, not because there is any sort of wrongdoing. As a company, Gibson is a legendary. They’ve done nothing wrong, except, apparently, deigning to have a Republican CEO.

The plot thickens, however.

One of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Company. The C.E.O., Chris Martin IV, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of election cycles. According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood.” In case you were wondering, that is the exact same wood in at least ten of Gibson’s guitars.

...regulates the importation of plants, animals, and products thereof into the United States. The Lacey Act effectively permits wooden musical instruments to be seized indefinitely, without compensation, and places the burden of proof on the owner, not the government. Do you own an $11,000 2011 Gibson Eric Clapton Edition Les Paul? Want to take it to Canada and back? You’d better be prepared to document the source of all materials to the government’s satisfaction upon your return, or you could lose it indefinitely. If you thinking documenting that is tough, what if you’re ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons returning from an overseas tour with your real 1959 sunburst Les Paul, for which you’ve already turned down at least one $5,000,000 offer? Good luck documenting the wood from a fifty-two-year-old guitar.

Very few [of our] readers travel with guitars, particularly across the country’s borders, so I don’t expect this to worry you personally. If, on the other hand, you want to drive across the Canadian or Mexican border in your own car — or even a rental — consider this: The same law that allows the Feds to raid American manufacturers and seize the possessions of Americans without compensation applies to cars, too.

...Simply possessing the timber product can make you a felon, regardless of whether or not you were involved in the harvesting, were the original importer, or had received any information regarding the source of the timber product...

...Here’s an example. Let’s say you are driving a Bentley Flying Spur with a rosewood interior. Importation of Brazilian rosewood is a felony under the Lacey Act. Do you know where the rosewood in your Spur came from? Can you prove it? In Gibson’s case, it was Indian rosewood that supposedly caused the bust; although the importation of Indian rosewood is legal, it has to be finished and prepared to certain standards in India. If raw Indian rosewood is sent to Bentley for finishing into dashboards — and make no mistake, that is how it is done — it may not break any British laws, but it breaks an American one, and you are now a convicted felon for visiting the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and coming back.

This federal government -- a behemoth now operated by the most partisan political hacks in my lifetime -- is completely out of control.